Air conditioning systems are currently commonplace in homes, office buildings and a variety of vehicles including, for example, automobiles. Over time, the refrigerant included in these systems gets depleted and/or contaminated. As such, in order to maintain the overall efficiency and efficacy of an air conditioning system, the refrigerant included therein may be periodically replaced or recharged.
Currently available processes for recharging air conditioning systems typically include placing refrigerant in a recharging unit, connecting the recharging unit to an air conditioning (A/C) system and transferring the refrigerant from the recharging unit to the A/C system. In order to estimate how much refrigerant has been transferred to the A/C system, the recharging unit typically includes a refrigerant containing vessel that is weighed before and after some refrigerant has been transferred to the air conditioning. Although this process is effective for many applications, the process is relatively time-consuming in that several transfers are typically required and refrigerant within the recharging unit has to be given time to settle after each transfer before an accurate weight measurement can be made. Also, currently available processes and recharging units are limited in accuracy because the same amount of refrigerant is typically added with each transfer (i.e., fine-tuning of the amount added is not available when the recharging process is close to having added a desired amount of refrigerant).